Children & youth
The Issue: Children & Youth
The pandemic has taken a toll on the children and youth in our community. They are feeling lonely, isolated, and are falling behind in school. Donations support mental health, physical safety and overall health and wellbeing of our community’s children and youth through programs like age specific counselling, mentorship programs, after school and weekend food, homework help and tutoring, bullying prevention, community centre spaces, and leadership and volunteer opportunities.
Child & Youth Planning Table
2021 Youth Impact Survey
Children & Youth
How we help
Today’s children & youth are tomorrow’s leaders and workforce. By meeting the basic needs of our youth now, they become caring, innovative and compassionate adults. United Way WRC support means mental health, physical safety, and overall health and wellbeing of our community’s children and youth through programs like:
- Age specific counselling and mentorship programs (Adventure4Change; Big Brothers Big Sisters of Waterloo Region; COPE Kids; Child Witness Centre)
- Youth Services programming (Offered by Langs; Canadian Aweil Youth Association, Argus Youth Residence)
- Homework help and tutoring (United for Literacy, Strong Start to Reading)
- Bullying prevention programs (John Howard Society of Waterloo Wellington)
- Leadership and volunteer opportunities (Bring On The Sunshine)
- School-based and weekend nutrition programs for children & youth (Nutrition for Learning, Food4Kids)
- The Region’s primary youth shelter (oneROOF)
Children & Youth
Your Impact
The following are examples of impact of your donations from funded organizations and their programs.
- Nutrition for Learning – 2 million meals provided during the 2021-2022 school year. 177 student nutrition programs are in elementary and secondary schools across Waterloo Region.
- Argus Residence for Young People – 104 youth served in 6 months through employment and shelter programs
- Canadian Aweil Youth Association – 75 families (members of Somalian, Eritrean and Ethiopian communities) served.
- Strong Start – 949 Children and youth 0-18 served in 8 school boards through the province in the fall of 2022 alone (Letters, Sounds and Words school literacy program).
- United Way helped to provide a stability of funds [to Argus] during this year when there continues to be uncertainty as to how our programs would have been affected by the pandemic, and pending recession. The funds were there to assist with many basic needs to ensure expenses such as food, utilities, safety, and quality of staffing to run the programs existed.” – Argus Residence for Young People
- Lifeline is a fundamental program for oneROOF and those we serve. Without UW funding, our hours of service would have been reduced drastically – no longer would we be able to provide 24/7, 365 support.” – OneROOF Youth Services
- “Funding from United Way has helped us continue to show up for students every day in Waterloo Region. We are currently in our 25th year, and we have never seen a need for our programs like this before. As anticipated this school year, we have seen food costs and delivery volumes rapidly increase throughout the year. The funding we received from United Way has helped ensure we meet the increasing need in Waterloo Region.” – Nutrition for Learning
- “Without the generous funding received from the United Way…Children who would have been identified as needing the program but unable to access it due to lack of funding would continue to struggle with their reading…Research shows that developing early literacy skills directly impacts graduation rates, employment rates and overall, the health and sustainability of the community.” – Strong Start
Children & youth
Funded partners
Below are the community partners we were able to fund in 2022 that support Children & Youth.
